La Vie Et Le Vide

Oh, she was right, she was right.

I have a friend, a relatively new one but a very good one nonetheless. In a short span of time, we hung out a lot, we got close. We started to throw over much of our usual weekly activity in favor of seeing each other, several times a week. It got to be a bit too much for her, and she declared she was taking a break, to rest, relax, and sort out feelings. I saw her today, in a crowd with a bunch of other people at a Cold Stone, and she was doing palm readings. Just for fun. She'd learned it at a young age, and was very happy to be doing it again. And one of the things she picked up about me from my palm - something that would not have been evident, even to her - hit home.

I do not put much stock in palmistry, or astrology, or fortunetelling of any sort. But one of the little lines in the palm of my hand told her that I do not fully engage myself, feel, and allow myself to be in the moment as much or as often as I should. It was a fairly brief note, and she went on to other things at greater length and interest to myself - presumably - and to her. That one thing, though, stuck with me.

It's true. I've thought about it before. Long ago, when I was young and impressionable and filled with the pains of young love and trauma, I learned a defense mechanism. I wouldn't feel. I would be cool, detached, analytical. Reason and rationality would prevail. And it worked - I was strong, the untroubled rock, and problems would flow around me and fall like rain. And the price was a heart of stone.

I'd recognized the problem and took steps to improve. Improve I did. I could feel again, love again. It was not perfect, however. It's why I so treasure the few I truly love, time well spent with good friends, rituals, and fighting - always was the training and the fighting. These things let me be fully in the moment. Without them, things would gray and pall, and I would be blase again - unbothered, but with a price.

And I've just had it brought to the surface. This friend, this perhaps-more-than-friend, drove off the grey very nicely indeed, and while she was gone, I reached out and surrounded myself with other friends, had good coffee and good times, to fight off the grey. But I need to be able to be rid of the gaze of the void completely. To be in the moment, wherever it is.

That starts tonight. Tomorrow, with a little luck, I see my girlfriend....and if I still feel it then, well, I'm already lost.